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authorNiklas Hallqvist <niklas@cvs.openbsd.org>1995-12-20 01:06:22 +0000
committerNiklas Hallqvist <niklas@cvs.openbsd.org>1995-12-20 01:06:22 +0000
commitc482518380683ee38d14024c1e362a0d681cf967 (patch)
treee69b4f6d3fee3aced20a41f3fdf543fc1c77fb5d /gnu/usr.bin/gcc/PROJECTS
parent76a62188d0db49c65b696d474c855a799fd96dce (diff)
FSF GCC version 2.7.2
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+0. Improved efficiency.
+
+* Parse and output array initializers an element at a time, freeing
+storage after each, instead of parsing the whole initializer first and
+then outputting. This would reduce memory usage for large
+initializers.
+
+* See if the techniques describe in Oct 1991 SIGPLAN Notices
+(Frazer and Hanson) are applicable to GCC.
+
+1. Better optimization.
+
+* Constants in unused inline functions
+
+It would be nice to delay output of string constants so that string
+constants mentioned in unused inline functions are never generated.
+Perhaps this would also take care of string constants in dead code.
+
+The difficulty is in finding a clean way for the RTL which refers
+to the constant (currently, only by an assembler symbol name)
+to point to the constant and cause it to be output.
+
+* More cse
+
+The techniques for doing full global cse are described in the red
+dragon book, or (a different version) in Frederick Chow's thesis from
+Stanford. It is likely to be slow and use a lot of memory, but it
+might be worth offering as an additional option.
+
+It is probably possible to extend cse to a few very frequent cases
+without so much expense.
+
+For example, it is not very hard to handle cse through if-then
+statements with no else clauses. Here's how to do it. On reaching a
+label, notice that the label's use-count is 1 and that the last
+preceding jump jumps conditionally to this label. Now you know it
+is a simple if-then statement. Remove from the hash table
+all the expressions that were entered since that jump insn
+and you can continue with cse.
+
+It is probably not hard to handle cse from the end of a loop
+around to the beginning, and a few loops would be greatly sped
+up by this.
+
+* Optimize a sequence of if statements whose conditions are exclusive.
+
+It is possible to optimize
+
+ if (x == 1) ...;
+ if (x == 2) ...;
+ if (x == 3) ...;
+
+into
+
+ if (x == 1) ...;
+ else if (x == 2) ...;
+ else if (x == 3) ...;
+
+provided that x is not altered by the contents of the if statements.
+
+It's not certain whether this is worth doing. Perhaps programmers
+nearly always write the else's themselves, leaving few opportunities
+to improve anything.
+
+* Un-cse.
+
+Perhaps we should have an un-cse step right after cse, which tries to
+replace a reg with its value if the value can be substituted for the
+reg everywhere, if that looks like an improvement. Which is if the
+reg is used only a few times. Use rtx_cost to determine if the
+change is really an improvement.
+
+* Clean up how cse works.
+
+The scheme is that each value has just one hash entry. The
+first_same_value and next_same_value chains are no longer needed.
+
+For arithmetic, each hash table elt has the following slots:
+
+* Operation. This is an rtx code.
+* Mode.
+* Operands 0, 1 and 2. These point to other hash table elements.
+
+So, if we want to enter (PLUS:SI (REG:SI 30) (CONST_INT 104)), we
+first enter (CONST_INT 104) and find the entry that (REG:SI 30) now
+points to. Then we put these elts into operands 0 and 1 of a new elt.
+We put PLUS and SI into the new elt.
+
+Registers and mem refs would never be entered into the table as such.
+However, the values they contain would be entered. There would be a
+table indexed by regno which points at the hash entry for the value in
+that reg.
+
+The hash entry index now plays the role of a qty number.
+We still need qty_first_reg, reg_next_eqv, etc. to record which regs
+share a particular qty.
+
+When a reg is used whose contents are unknown, we need to create a
+hash table entry whose contents say "unknown", as a place holder for
+whatever the reg contains. If that reg is added to something, then
+the hash entry for the sum will refer to the "unknown" entry. Use
+UNKNOWN for the rtx code in this entry. This replaces make_new_qty.
+
+For a constant, a unique hash entry would be made based on the
+value of the constant.
+
+What about MEM? Each time a memory address is referenced, we need a
+qty (a hash table elt) to represent what is in it. (Just as for a
+register.) If this isn't known, create one, just as for a reg whose
+contents are unknown.
+
+We need a way to find all mem refs that still contain a certain value.
+Do this with a chain of hash elts (for memory addresses) that point to
+locations that hold the value. The hash elt for the value itself should
+point to the start of the chain. It would be good for the hash elt
+for an address to point to the hash elt for the contents of that address
+(but this ptr can be null if the contents have never been entered).
+
+With this data structure, nothing need ever be invalidated except
+the lists of which regs or mems hold a particular value. It is easy
+to see if there is a reg or mem that is equiv to a particular value.
+If the value is constant, it is always explicitly constant.
+
+* Support more general tail-recursion among different functions.
+
+This might be possible under certain circumstances, such as when
+the argument lists of the functions have the same lengths.
+Perhaps it could be done with a special declaration.
+
+You would need to verify in the calling function that it does not
+use the addresses of any local variables and does not use setjmp.
+
+* Put short statics vars at low addresses and use short addressing mode?
+
+Useful on the 68000/68020 and perhaps on the 32000 series,
+provided one has a linker that works with the feature.
+This is said to make a 15% speedup on the 68000.
+
+* Keep global variables in registers.
+
+Here is a scheme for doing this. A global variable, or a local variable
+whose address is taken, can be kept in a register for an entire function
+if it does not use non-constant memory addresses and (for globals only)
+does not call other functions. If the entire function does not meet
+this criterion, a loop may.
+
+The VAR_DECL for such a variable would have to have two RTL expressions:
+the true home in memory, and the pseudo-register used temporarily.
+It is necessary to emit insns to copy the memory location into the
+pseudo-register at the beginning of the function or loop, and perhaps
+back out at the end. These insns should have REG_EQUIV notes so that,
+if the pseudo-register does not get a hard register, it is spilled into
+the memory location which exists in any case.
+
+The easiest way to set up these insns is to modify the routine
+put_var_into_stack so that it does not apply to the entire function
+(sparing any loops which contain nothing dangerous) and to call it at
+the end of the function regardless of where in the function the
+address of a local variable is taken. It would be called
+unconditionally at the end of the function for all relevant global
+variables.
+
+For debugger output, the thing to do is to invent a new binding level
+around the appropriate loop and define the variable name as a register
+variable with that scope.
+
+* Live-range splitting.
+
+Currently a variable is allocated a hard register either for the full
+extent of its use or not at all. Sometimes it would be good to
+allocate a variable a hard register for just part of a function; for
+example, through a particular loop where the variable is mostly used,
+or outside of a particular loop where the variable is not used. (The
+latter is nice because it might let the variable be in a register most
+of the time even though the loop needs all the registers.)
+
+It might not be very hard to do this in global.c when a variable
+fails to get a hard register for its entire life span.
+
+The first step is to find a loop in which the variable is live, but
+which is not the whole life span or nearly so. It's probably best to
+use a loop in which the variable is heavily used.
+
+Then create a new pseudo-register to represent the variable in that loop.
+Substitute this for the old pseudo-register there, and insert move insns
+to copy between the two at the loop entry and all exits. (When several
+such moves are inserted at the same place, some new feature should be
+added to say that none of those registers conflict merely because of
+overlap between the new moves. And the reload pass should reorder them
+so that a store precedes a load, for any given hard register.)
+
+After doing this for all the reasonable candidates, run global-alloc
+over again. With luck, one of the two pseudo-registers will be fit
+somewhere. It may even have a much higher priority due to its reduced
+life span.
+
+There will be no room in general for the new pseudo-registers in
+basic_block_live_at_start, so there will need to be a second such
+matrix exclusively for the new ones. Various other vectors indexed by
+register number will have to be made bigger, or there will have to be
+secondary extender vectors just for global-alloc.
+
+A simple new feature could arrange that both pseudo-registers get the
+same stack slot if they both fail to get hard registers.
+
+Other compilers split live ranges when they are not connected, or
+try to split off pieces `at the edge'. I think splitting around loops
+will provide more speedup.
+
+Creating a fake binding block and a new like-named variable with
+shorter life span and different address might succeed in describing
+this technique for the debugger.
+
+* Detect dead stores into memory?
+
+A store into memory is dead if it is followed by another store into
+the same location; and, in between, there is no reference to anything
+that might be that location (including no reference to a variable
+address).
+
+* Loop optimization.
+
+Strength reduction and iteration variable elimination could be
+smarter. They should know how to decide which iteration variables are
+not worth making explicit because they can be computed as part of an
+address calculation. Based on this information, they should decide
+when it is desirable to eliminate one iteration variable and create
+another in its place.
+
+It should be possible to compute what the value of an iteration
+variable will be at the end of the loop, and eliminate the variable
+within the loop by computing that value at the loop end.
+
+When a loop has a simple increment that adds 1,
+instead of jumping in after the increment,
+decrement the loop count and jump to the increment.
+This allows aob insns to be used.
+
+* Using constraints on values.
+
+Many operations could be simplified based on knowledge of the
+minimum and maximum possible values of a register at any particular time.
+These limits could come from the data types in the tree, via rtl generation,
+or they can be deduced from operations that are performed. For example,
+the result of an `and' operation one of whose operands is 7 must be in
+the range 0 to 7. Compare instructions also tell something about the
+possible values of the operand, in the code beyond the test.
+
+Value constraints can be used to determine the results of a further
+comparison. They can also indicate that certain `and' operations are
+redundant. Constraints might permit a decrement and branch
+instruction that checks zeroness to be used when the user has
+specified to exit if negative.
+
+* Smarter reload pass.
+
+The reload pass as currently written can reload values only into registers
+that are reserved for reloading. This means that in order to use a
+register for reloading it must spill everything out of that register.
+
+It would be straightforward, though complicated, for reload1.c to keep
+track, during its scan, of which hard registers were available at each
+point in the function, and use for reloading even registers that were
+free only at the point they were needed. This would avoid much spilling
+and make better code.
+
+* Change the type of a variable.
+
+Sometimes a variable is declared as `int', it is assigned only once
+from a value of type `char', and then it is used only by comparison
+against constants. On many machines, better code would result if
+the variable had type `char'. If the compiler could detect this
+case, it could change the declaration of the variable and change
+all the places that use it.
+
+* Better handling for very sparse switches.
+
+There may be cases where it would be better to compile a switch
+statement to use a fixed hash table rather than the current
+combination of jump tables and binary search.
+
+* Order of subexpressions.
+
+It might be possible to make better code by paying attention
+to the order in which to generate code for subexpressions of an expression.
+
+* More code motion.
+
+Consider hoisting common code up past conditional branches or
+tablejumps.
+
+* Trace scheduling.
+
+This technique is said to be able to figure out which way a jump
+will usually go, and rearrange the code to make that path the
+faster one.
+
+* Distributive law.
+
+The C expression *(X + 4 * (Y + C)) compiles better on certain
+machines if rewritten as *(X + 4*C + 4*Y) because of known addressing
+modes. It may be tricky to determine when, and for which machines, to
+use each alternative.
+
+Some work has been done on this, in combine.c.
+
+* Can optimize by changing if (x) y; else z; into z; if (x) y;
+if z and x do not interfere and z has no effects not undone by y.
+This is desirable if z is faster than jumping.
+
+* For a two-insn loop on the 68020, such as
+ foo: movb a2@+,a3@+
+ jne foo
+it is better to insert dbeq d0,foo before the jne.
+d0 can be a junk register. The challenge is to fit this into
+a portable framework: when can you detect this situation and
+still be able to allocate a junk register?
+
+2. Simpler porting.
+
+Right now, describing the target machine's instructions is done
+cleanly, but describing its addressing mode is done with several
+ad-hoc macro definitions. Porting would be much easier if there were
+an RTL description for addressing modes like that for instructions.
+Tools analogous to genflags and genrecog would generate macros from
+this description.
+
+There would be one pattern in the address-description file for each
+kind of addressing, and this pattern would have:
+
+ * the RTL expression for the address
+ * C code to verify its validity (since that may depend on
+ the exact data).
+ * C code to print the address in assembler language.
+ * C code to convert the address into a valid one, if it is not valid.
+ (This would replace LEGITIMIZE_ADDRESS).
+ * Register constraints for all indeterminates that appear
+ in the RTL expression.
+
+3. Other languages.
+
+Front ends for Pascal, Fortran, Algol, Cobol, Modula-2 and Ada are
+desirable.
+
+Pascal, Modula-2 and Ada require the implementation of functions
+within functions. Some of the mechanisms for this already exist.
+
+4. More extensions.
+
+* Generated unique labels. Have some way of generating distinct labels
+for use in extended asm statements. I don't know what a good syntax would
+be.
+
+* A way of defining a structure containing a union, in which the choice of
+union alternative is controlled by a previous structure component.
+
+Here is a possible syntax for this.
+
+struct foo {
+ enum { INT, DOUBLE } code;
+ auto union { case INT: int i; case DOUBLE: double d;} value : code;
+};
+
+* Allow constructor expressions as lvalues, like this:
+
+ (struct foo) {a, b, c} = foo();
+
+This would call foo, which returns a structure, and then store the
+several components of the structure into the variables a, b, and c.
+
+5. Generalize the machine model.
+
+* Some new compiler features may be needed to do a good job on machines
+where static data needs to be addressed using base registers.
+
+* Some machines have two stacks in different areas of memory, one used
+for scalars and another for large objects. The compiler does not
+now have a way to understand this.
+
+6. Useful warnings.
+
+* Warn about statements that are undefined because the order of
+evaluation of increment operators makes a big difference. Here is an
+example:
+
+ *foo++ = hack (*foo);
+
+7. Better documentation of how GCC works and how to port it.
+
+Here is an outline proposed by Allan Adler.
+
+I. Overview of this document
+II. The machines on which GCC is implemented
+ A. Prose description of those characteristics of target machines and
+ their operating systems which are pertinent to the implementation
+ of GCC.
+ i. target machine characteristics
+ ii. comparison of this system of machine characteristics with
+ other systems of machine specification currently in use
+ B. Tables of the characteristics of the target machines on which
+ GCC is implemented.
+ C. A priori restrictions on the values of characteristics of target
+ machines, with special reference to those parts of the source code
+ which entail those restrictions
+ i. restrictions on individual characteristics
+ ii. restrictions involving relations between various characteristics
+ D. The use of GCC as a cross-compiler
+ i. cross-compilation to existing machines
+ ii. cross-compilation to non-existent machines
+ E. Assumptions which are made regarding the target machine
+ i. assumptions regarding the architecture of the target machine
+ ii. assumptions regarding the operating system of the target machine
+ iii. assumptions regarding software resident on the target machine
+ iv. where in the source code these assumptions are in effect made
+III. A systematic approach to writing the files tm.h and xm.h
+ A. Macros which require special care or skill
+ B. Examples, with special reference to the underlying reasoning
+IV. A systematic approach to writing the machine description file md
+ A. Minimal viable sets of insn descriptions
+ B. Examples, with special reference to the underlying reasoning
+V. Uses of the file aux-output.c
+VI. Specification of what constitutes correct performance of an
+ implementation of GCC
+ A. The components of GCC
+ B. The itinerary of a C program through GCC
+ C. A system of benchmark programs
+ D. What your RTL and assembler should look like with these benchmarks
+ E. Fine tuning for speed and size of compiled code
+VII. A systematic procedure for debugging an implementation of GCC
+ A. Use of GDB
+ i. the macros in the file .gdbinit for GCC
+ ii. obstacles to the use of GDB
+ a. functions implemented as macros can't be called in GDB
+ B. Debugging without GDB
+ i. How to turn off the normal operation of GCC and access specific
+ parts of GCC
+ C. Debugging tools
+ D. Debugging the parser
+ i. how machine macros and insn definitions affect the parser
+ E. Debugging the recognizer
+ i. how machine macros and insn definitions affect the recognizer
+
+ditto for other components
+
+VIII. Data types used by GCC, with special reference to restrictions not
+ specified in the formal definition of the data type
+IX. References to the literature for the algorithms used in GCC
+